Moll Flanders

I love to read. But I hate being told to read. I have to read the final 80 pages of Moll Flanders today so that I can start Evelina tomorrow but it really is difficult to motivate myself to start. It's not that I don't like the book per se: the subject matter is actually really interesting to me as I've always been fascinated with love, sex, money and the emotions that come with all that, as well as the position of women and the working classes in society but I really don't understand why this book is a classic.
With The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, it reeks of pure talent. Of beauty and art and has not only a deep plot but extremely vivid descriptions, three-dimensional characters etc. etc. But with Moll Flanders, I just don't see why it is held in such high regard. It is a good book, sure, but in my opinion, there are a great deal of 21st century writers who are far more eloquent than Daniel Defoe.
I'm sure I will hear a lot of pretentious nonsense in the weeks to come about how "Moll's lovers aren't written about in detail so that the reader is free to invent the characters themselves, it's genius" but to me, that isn't genius.
For instance, at the beginning of the book, I know that Moll is in love with the elder of two brothers when really the younger one has a purer heart and is far more suited to her, but I don't understand why she is in love with him. He doesn't captivate me in the same way that Edward Cullen steals the hearts of millions of teenage girls worldwide or charm me like Heathcliff does. He's almost invisible. We have no idea of his mannerisms, thoughts, feelings, passions and actions. All we know is that Moll loves him but, unable to understand why, we can't truly empathise with her and so cannot fully be drawn into the story.
Anyway I really must stop writing and start to read, literature is a fantastic distraction for me at the minute, despite my love/hate relationship with it.